How to grow an audience as a writer
What are the three magic ingredients for how to grow an audience as a writer?
- You need great writing. That’s what makes people want to belong in your audience, to get that great writing on a regular basis.
- Some kind of distribution network. Social media is the classic example people think of here. When you go on Instagram, when you go on Twitter, when you go on Medium, you’ll see things from people you don’t know, and you have the option to hit that follow button. That is distribution. This is great, because it means you don’t need to have your own audience to start growing an audience. You just need to have great content — in the case of being a writer, you need to have great writing.
- A way to consistently reach the people who have said, “Yes. Show me this person’s writing every time they post.”
I’m a Medium employee, and before I worked at Medium, I wrote on Medium.com for six years. I’m a fan, I’m an employee, I’m a user. It means I’m a little biased, because I love Medium, and I hope you will too, and I have access to information, data, and trends that a lot of other people don’t. So hopefully, I can use Medium as a way to show you how to grow your audience.
Let’s break down the three ingredients, how to grow an audience on Medium, and common FAQs and obstacles.
Prefer watching? Here’s the video:
Note: this is a long guide! If you’re on web, feel free to mouse over to the Table of Contents on the right to navigate this more easily.
Ingredient one: great writing
Let’s talk about that first magic ingredient, great writing.
I’m not going to venture to tell you what great writing is, for two reasons. Number one, it’s so unique. What’s great writing for me is going to be different from what’s great writing for you, and crucially, for the people you want to grow into your following. And secondly, it depends so much on what you’re writing about.
Great writing in terms of poetry is going to be very different from what makes a great data science tutorial, for example.
There’s a lot of great advice on great writing out there on the internet, so read your favorite authors and writers on writing. You should also do a lot of your own reading to develop your own perspective on what writing you enjoy.
The one piece of advice I can give from my perspective as a Medium employee: One thing we hear over and over again from readers is that they don’t like it when things feel AI generated.
You’ll notice I said feel. There are people who write in a generic way, using their totally human fingers. There are people who use AI to write very effectively who go completely undetected. What readers are reacting to is not so much the AI-ness of it, but this feeling that anybody could have written this piece. We can get that for free.
What makes somebody want to say, “Yeah, this is good, I want to follow this person to get more,” is something that’s uniquely you — something that’s really valuable, that helps change their mind, teach them a new skill, make them laugh, make them feel less alone — something only you could have written.
That’s the really key ingredient that all great writing has: it comes from a person, and that person is you.
To find out what value you, personally, have to give, read everywhere you can. Develop your own perspective on what makes good writing great writing. Read in your niche. Read outside of your niche. Land on what you uniquely have to offer in writing.
Ingredient two: a distribution platform
When it comes to picking the distribution platform, you have quite a few options at your disposal. I’m going to walk through Medium because that’s my personal expertise, but I also encourage you to check out places like Reddit, LinkedIn, building your own website — that’s distribution through SEO, where people search for things in Google and find your writing that way. Weirdly, there are writers who are killing it growing their audience on Instagram. Many options exist.
But I would recommend, for every beginner, Medium. It’s the easiest place to start writing and building an audience.
Many people will ask: but what about Substack?
Substack more traditionally fits into the third ingredient: a way to reach the people who’ve said they want to follow you. That’s what a newsletter is.
But they do have something called the notes feed, which works more like a pretty standard social media discovery feed — I’m getting recommended short posts there from people I don’t follow.
The difference that’s critical to keep in mind is that this is all short form, not long form. So the discovery aspect is focused on short posts. You can still reach new readers, but you’re going to be reaching them through short form, not long form. (I go deeper on the platform question, including six reasons a lot of writers pick Medium over Substack, if you want to compare.)
As a discovery platform, Medium uses a lot of different factors to work out who to show your stories to:
- Who follows you
- If you publish in a publication (more later), who follows that pub
- If a reader follows or frequently reads about the topic you’re writing on
- If someone in the reader’s network reacted to your story in some way
In short, it’s going to show your writing to people based on what your story’s about, not only based on how many followers you have.
Should you start your own blog?
In short, yes — eventually, maybe once you’re about a year into blogging. It’s always a good idea to have a surface you completely own.
But I don’t recommend it at the start because — and this is an honest truth from my experience — it is a pain to set up your own blog on a domain that you own, figuring out what the heck a DNS is. Trying to work out SEO is not for the faint of heart.
At the beginning, as a blogger trying to grow an audience, there are so many other challenges in your way: figuring out your voice, your consistency, what you want to write about, finding the time, building a writing habit. Those are all going to be in your way already! Don’t add more obstacles.
Pick an easy place where you can be pretty confident that your writing is going to reach people who want to see it. That’s the easiest way. Then once you’ve got a good thing going, invest time and money in setting up your own blog.
Ingredient three: a way to keep in touch
You have great writing. You’re reaching new readers. Now you need a way to consistently reach those people over time. Most commonly, this is a newsletter.
What a lot of writers do is publish on Medium, and then somewhere in their story say, “Hey, if you like this, you should go check out my newsletter to get more.”
If you decided to go the SEO route to get distribution, the same strategy applies. Optimize a particular blog post for an SEO keyword like “edamame salad,” and then incentivize the readers who land on that one page to sign up for a newsletter, so they’ll find you again.
Medium also has features that help make it more of a reach-your-existing-audience tool. When you write a story and hit publish, you have the option to notify people who have subscribed to you:
You get subscribers on Medium when someone hits that follow button and opts into email notifications from you.
This is not the same as a newsletter. This is literally just an email notification. It means that when Anna publishes something new, I get an email to the first part of her story, basically saying, “Hey, Anna published a new story, you should go check it out.”
You do have a way to consistently reach the people who’ve said they want to hear from you on Medium, which is another reason it’s greta for beginners: you don’t need to set up a newsletter or anything; you can consistently reach your true fans. As you go further down the audience-building path, you might want more customization or monetization options, which is a great point to look at a tool like Substack, Kit, Beehiiv, or Ghost that are more dedicated newsletter platforms.
How to use Medium’s tools to reach readers
We’ve talked about those three ingredients: great writing, a way to distribute your writing to new followers, and a way for those followers to say, “Yeah, hit me up every time you publish something new.”
Now I want to spend the rest of this story on how to use Medium’s tools to reach those readers, both the new ones and the existing ones.
Every platform is going to have tools like this. Whether or not you pick Medium, spend some time getting to know the platform you’re posting on. A lot of writers — the biggest mistake I see — publish and expect their great writing to do all the work for them. And the fact is that there are so many people doing that right now that you have to use every advantage at your disposal.
On Medium, those advantages are using topics, submitting your story to publications, using data to figure out your titles (this one is really important), and filling out your bio to the best of your ability. Let’s talk about those. (I also wrote a fuller walkthrough of how to grow your audience on Medium as a beginner writer, and a 6-step checklist to get started, if you want more detail than what’s here.)
Topics
Medium, like a lot of other social media platforms, is looking for ways to make sure we’re pairing the right story recommendation with the right reader. How do we do that? One way is by looking at the topic the story is about.
There are a zillion topics on Medium. I recommend going to the Explore Topics page, because this lets you get a good idea of what topics are popular, how many people follow particular topics, and what’s popular in that topic as well. (Here’s a full guide to using topics on Medium.)
For example, let’s say you write about motherhood. You can click on that topic and really explore it. You can see that 90,000 people follow this topic. You can follow it yourself — I really recommend doing this, it’s great market research. You can see what other topics you can use to navigate to related topics.
You can add up to five topics on every story you publish to help Medium find the right readers for it. When you click the Publish button, you’ll be taken to a pre-publish page, and here’s where you can add your topics.
Go through the Explore Topics page and find up to five topics that’ll really help your story reach its readers. Medium uses this to recommend stories to readers. Stories with at least one topic — and ideally at least five topics — are way more likely to reach interested readers than those with no topics. It’s one of the tools Medium uses to do that matchmaking between story and reader.
Publications
On this pre-publish page, you’ll also see the option to submit your story to a publication. What does that mean? What the heck is a publication?
A publication is a collection of themed stories on Medium. Publications are run by regular writers, not Medium staff. Any Medium member can create a publication about any topic and run it any way they like.
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A lot of publications are open to stories from other writers. For example, if we go to Frazzled, the home of funny parents, you can see they have submission guidelines.
Read the submission guidelines, see what’s popular, what they’re looking for, and see if there’s something you want to write that could be a good fit for this publication.
Why submit to a publication? There are a number of reasons.
- Publications have their own audience. You, as a new writer, have zero followers on Medium — no shame, everybody starts on Medium with zero followers, that’s just how it is. By getting your story accepted to a publication, you get to piggyback off this existing audience and have your story recommended to followers of the publication, even if they don’t follow you.
- Publication editors frequently have a really hands-on approach to improving your story. They might recommend a different title. They might say, “Hey, tighten this up, it’s not great.” They might say, “This isn’t a good fit for us.” It’s hard to hear, but even that feedback can be really useful. Working with publications is a great way to get a second pair of eyes on your story and piggyback off that audience.
So how do you take advantage of these resources? Go to the Explore Topics page, pick a topic, and see which publications naturally crop up in that topic. That gives you a good idea of which publications are active and which ones are reaching readers. Explore every publication you’re interested in, and make sure they’re open to new writers by checking if they have submission guidelines. Carefully read the submission guidelines — they’ll give you everything you need to know to get your story accepted. (Here’s more on how — and why — to submit to a Medium publication.)
Expect to sometimes get rejected from publications. Editors can be really particular about the stories they want to give a home to. But the upshot is that when you do get a story accepted, you’re way more likely to reach interested readers than you are just self-publishing into the void.
Titles
Next, let’s talk about titles. I’ve noticed that writers don’t often like to talk about titles, and I think it’s because a lot of writers are allergic to self-promotion.
In a perfect world, it doesn’t matter what your title is, because the writing is so great that people naturally want to click and read your story.
Once you have a following, this is a little more true — people recognize your name in their inbox, on their feeds, and think, “Oh yeah, Zulie, I know her, I trust her, I’ll click on this story even though she’s got a crap title.” It’s not always true, even for people who know and love you, and it’s certainly not true at the beginning, when readers don’t have that trust. They don’t have that reason to click.
So I recommend you do two things. First, analyze the titles of other writers in your niche that work on you. Go to the topics page and see which titles are popular. You can also make a note of what titles work on you — what makes you think, “Oh yeah, I want to click on that, I’m interested” — and try to figure out what conveys that value, what makes you say, “Yeah, this is so clear, the value to me is so clear,” and apply those learnings to your own titles. (There’s a full guide to writing titles on Medium if you want to go deeper.)
Once you have a bit of a repertoire of your own stories, go to your stats page and look at which stories have the biggest click-through rate.
Here’s an example story of mine: “How do you write a blog post?” Medium shows me how many times it was presented across Medium. I can also see I got a 6.2% feed click-through rate. This is a little lower than the benchmark I’d like to see, of 7 to 10%, but it’s not terrible.
I can also see how many people followed me and how many subscribed to get notified when I publish something new. That’s important for that third ingredient I talked about — the ability to reach people who’ve said, “Yes, let me know when this person publishes something new.” (Here’s how to use Medium stats to find and understand your readers if you want the full breakdown.)
So look through your stories, see which ones have a high click-through rate and which have a low one, and try not to take it personally. I know, as a writer, I sometimes get very sensitive to rejection, and when someone doesn’t click on my story, that can feel like rejection. But try to look at it as what it is — data, something you can learn from.
Your bio
This is a fun stat I love sharing with people. Having a fully filled-out bio can lead to four times as many followers on Medium.
So what does that mean? Here’s a great bio from Tobin Zolkowski:
This bio tells me what I need to know about him, and it tells me whether I want to follow him or not.
Now here’s an example of a bio that hasn’t been filled in.
This person doesn’t have a profile picture. There’s no line in their bio explaining why people should follow them. It’s really unclear what the value is to me as a reader, why I should want to follow this person to get more.
Now, I might follow anyway, because I might think, “Oh, this story was really great, I loved it, I don’t need to know who this person is to know I enjoy their writing.” But it helps so much if you give readers just that extra reason to click.
This is probably true everywhere, not just on Medium — I just happen to have the data for Medium, where profiles that are fully filled out with a name, a picture, and a bio just get more followers. They get four times as many, at least. But I imagine it’s true everywhere.
So regardless of whether or not you pick Medium as your discovery platform, fill out your bio if you want to grow your audience as a writer. (Here’s more on how — and why — to set up your Medium bio and About page.)
Common obstacles (and how to get past them)
I asked Medium writers what the biggest challenges were when they started out, and what helped them overcome them. The things that came up over and over: not knowing how to get started, struggling to publish consistently, and feeling like it’s really hard to stand out. So if any of those sound familiar, you are not alone. You’re in great company. Let’s talk about how to get over those obstacles.
Obstacle one: not knowing how to get started
This is so common, and I think it’s a really underrated problem. A lot of platforms are just like, “Yeah, just start posting, you’ll be fine.” The truth is that the more you understand about the tools the platform uses to recommend your writing, the better off you’re going to be. But it’s hard to know how to get started. Here’s my advice: start small.
Don’t try to figure out topics and publications and titles and your bio and your niche and consistency all at once. Pick one thing. Pick understanding what is a good publication to submit to for one story. Pick exploring one topic and figuring out what titles work in that area. Or pick figuring out what consistency works for you.
On Medium, the algorithm doesn’t ding you if you’re consistent and then inconsistent. The only thing the algorithm’s looking at is the story you publish. It doesn’t matter if you published yesterday or a year ago. So look for a consistency that works for you versus the platform. Do you like to write once a month, once a week, whatever? You can spend some time figuring that out.
Slowly, your knowledge base is going to build. You can learn from other writers. You can join events — like we host Medium 101 webinars and The Writers Circle, if you want to get to know other writers and learn more about Medium. But start small, and don’t feel like you have to have everything figured out from the get-go. Every story is a new, fresh slate.
Obstacle two: staying consistent
Most people I know don’t write for fun as the only thing they do. Most of us have full-time jobs. Many of us have families, partners, hobbies, responsibilities that take us away from our computer or our journal or whatever. A lot of people find that they have a desire to start writing but can’t really find the time to sit down and type out those stories.
I’m going to come back to my number one piece of advice, which is: make sure writing is fun for you.
There are a lot of ways to tackle this, but where I see people get tripped up often is thinking they have to have a niche before they start.
This is a little more true once you start thinking about that third ingredient, the newsletter aspect — if you’re reaching the same people consistently, they tend to start trusting you more on one topic versus a zillion topics. However, if you’re focusing on the second ingredient, which is just discoverability, especially on Medium, I can tell you with 100% certainty, you don’t need to niche down.
Medium is not looking at what the last 10 things you published were. Medium is only looking at what you just published. Who’s the best fit to read it? The recommendation system is looking at things like topics, publications, how readers are reacting to it already, not “Oh, she published a story about cats, and now she’s writing one about food — let’s not show that to anybody.”
Niching is the enemy of consistency, actually, because a lot of times you’re going to feel that you don’t have anything to say about cats today, but you already picked my cat niche. Instead of getting stumped, pivot!
- Write about something that inspires you.
- Write about something for fun.
- Write about something your friend asked you about and you had a good answer to.
Make sure to keep it fun, and don’t feel limited by your niche. That’s one of my best tips for staying consistent with writing: just build that writing habit. Don’t worry about the niche yet.
On Medium, what I tend to see happen is people naturally kind of fall into a lane. (I don’t like to call it a niche, because it’s a little wider than that.) Over time, you’ll find topics you just enjoy writing in more, topics where you develop a really good relationship with the publication editor, and you’ll find your audience reacts better to you when you write about XYZ and not ABC or whatever. That comes with time and experience.
You’re not going to be penalized for exploring and having fun, especially at the start. Use tools like publications and topics to make sure your story is still getting distributed to interested readers, but don’t feel limited by a niche.
Obstacle three: how to stand out
This was also a really big frustration for a lot of writers, and it’s intimidating. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands — millions — of writers there are on the World Wide Web. It’s common to worry, “Why should I publish my story about how to train my cats? What right do I have to insert myself in that conversation? There are so many people who are doing it well already. How can I stand out? How can I differentiate myself?”
This comes back to something I said at the start: it’s the great writing. What makes great writing? It’s writing that can only come from you. What’s something that only you know? What’s something that only you can write? Where is your personal experience?
Personal experience can come from a lot of different places. It can come from your job — things you’ve experienced at work. It can come from your relationships with your friends and family — that’s something that, by nature, has only happened to you, not anybody else. It can be your hobbies — maybe you’re a prolific cross-stitcher, you can write about that and stand out there. Maybe you have a degree in something, and you want to go in that direction, talk about what you’ve learned there.
I see a lot of people try to copy viral articles, and that almost never works, because it’s a pale imitation of something that’s truly valuable. What made that story do well was not the topic. What made it do well was that the writer had a unique perspective on something, and they wrote about it. Look for that thing in your own writing. That’s how you’re going to stand out.
Wrapping up
I’ll leave you with this: I really do think Medium is the best place to write, especially as a beginner, but even beyond — even writers who develop an audience elsewhere, many come to Medium to cross-post, because it’s a free, easy way to get additional distribution for their stories, and we’re building more and more tools that help you reach that audience consistently over time.
There are a lot of other platforms and tools at your disposal. Don’t feel limited just because I said Medium’s best. Feel free to explore and see what works for you, your writing style, and where your readers are.
Hopefully, this gave you all the information you need to find the best place to build an audience yourself as a writer, whether that’s on Medium, your own personal blog, or on Instagram, maybe.
Most of all, I hope that you write. I hope this gave you all you need to start writing and building your audience, hopefully on Medium, but most importantly, just somewhere! Happy writing.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Do I need a big following to reach readers on Medium? A: No. Medium recommends stories, not writers, based on topics, publications, and reading history, so even a story from someone with zero followers can reach interested readers.
Q: Should I niche down before I start writing? A: Definitely right away, unless you really and truly only want to write about one thing. Medium’s recommendation system looks at what you just published, not your publishing history, so you’re free to explore different topics early on. A lane tends to emerge naturally over time.
Q: What’s the difference between followers and subscribers on Medium? A: Following just means someone is more likely to see your future stories in their feed. Subscribing means they’ve opted in to get an email notification (with the first part of the story) every time you publish something new.
Q: What click-through rate should I aim for on my titles? A: Around 7–10% is a good benchmark. If you’re consistently seeing 2–3%, it’s a sign to revisit your titles.
Q: Should I start my own blog or newsletter right away? A: Probably not at the very beginning. Setting up your own domain, DNS, and SEO adds obstacles on top of the ones you already face as a new writer. It’s often easier to build an audience on an existing platform first and consider your own blog around a year in.
Q: How much does a filled-out bio actually matter? A: A lot. Medium’s data shows fully filled-out profiles (photo, name, and bio) get about four times as many followers as empty or thin ones.
